Anthropology

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Your course structure

The Bachelor of Arts requires the successful completion of 24 subjects (300-points), including at least one major. Most students study eight subjects each year (usually four subjects in each semester) for three years full-time, or the part-time equivalent.

Most Arts majors require 100 points of study (usually eight subjects) for attainment. This means out of your 300-point program, you have the opportunity to achieve two majors in your course.

Breadth studies

Breadth is a unique feature of the Melbourne Model. It gives you the chance to explore subjects outside of arts, developing new perspectives and learning to collaborate with others who have different strengths and interests — just as you will in your future career.

Some of our students use breadth to explore creative interests or topics they have always been curious about. Others used breadth to improve their career prospects by complementing their major with a language, communication skills or business expertise.

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Explore the subjects you could choose as part of this major.

Available in this major

Arts Foundation

NameCredit points

Identity12.5

Identity

Who we are and what we do is all tangled up in our identity. This subject considers how identities are constructed and maintained through mediated processes of self and other. The subject investigates the myriad demands and devices that figure in constructing our senses of self and other (including language, leisure, beliefs and embodied practices). By exploring identity in diverse contexts, across time and place, the subject maps varying conceptions of self and other and how these conceptions are constructed and maintained. A key focus is on how these mediated conceptions of self and other are translated into material practices of inclusion, exclusion, discrimination, violence and criminalisation.

Language

Language plays a central role in the central disciplinary areas in the humanities and social sciences. This subject gives students tools for thinking about language in a range of disciplines, including linguistics, history, sociology, politics, literary studies, anthropology, language studies, psychology and psychoanalytic theory. It shows how language can be analysed as a system, but also how language features centrally in politcal and social contexts: for example, in the processing of the claims of asylum seekers, in developing views of ethnicity, race and nation, and in colonialism; and in the construction of gendered and sexual identity. The role of language in the psyche, and the process of acquisition of languages in children and in adults, are also important topics. Knowing how to think about language, and familiarity with the main thinkers who have discussed language in a range of humanities and social science disciplines, provide an indispensable basis for study in any area of the Arts degree.

Power

The idea of power is a way to grasp the character of social relations. Investigating power can tell us about who is in control and who may benefit from such arrangements. Power can be a zero-sum game of domination. It can also be about people acting together to enact freedom. This subject examines the diverse and subtle ways power may be exercised. It considers how power operates in different domains such as markets, political systems and other social contexts. It also examines how power may be moderated by such things as regulation and human rights. A key aim is to explore how differing perspectives portray power relations and how issues of power distribution may be characterised and addressed.

Reason

Reason, many believe, is what makes us human. Until recently, most scientists and philosophers agreed that the ability to use the mind to analyse and interpret the world is something intrinsic to the nature of our species. Reason has a long and extraordinary history. We will explore a number of inter-related themes: the nature of reason from Ancient Greece to our contemporary world; the ever shifting relationship between reason and faith; reason's place in the development of scientific experimentation and thinking; shifting perspectives about the uses of Reason and, finally, how reason relates to theories of the mind, exploring the tensions between reason, the passions and the will.

Reason will take you on a journey from Plato's cave to the neuro-scientists' lab. We will visit revolutions in science, thinking and politics. We will explore the impact of some of the great philosophers of history, including Plato, Aristotle, Hume, Bentham, Coleridge, Marx, Nietzsche, Foucault and many more besides. By the end of this subject you will have a deep understanding of the importance of the idea of reason to human history and philosophy. You might, even, be able to answer the question: 'does reason exist?'

Reason is an Arts Foundation Subject and we will argue that understanding the history and philosophy of reason provides great insights into many aspects of the humanities from political philosophy to understanding history. We will, of course, be paying particular attention to the foundational skills that will help you successfully complete your Arts major: particularly critical thinking and argument development.

Aboriginalities

This subject will provide students with an introduction to the complexity, challenges and richness of Australian Indigenous life and cultures. Drawing on a wide range of diverse and dynamic guest lecturers, this subject gives students an opportunity to encounter Australian Indigenous knowledges, histories and experiences through interdisciplinary perspectives. Across three thematic blocks - Indigenous Knowledges, Social and Political Contexts and Representation/Self-Representation - this subject engages contemporary cultural and intellectual debate. Social and political contexts will be considered through engagement with specific issues and a focus on Indigenous cultural forms, which may include literature, music, fine arts, museum exhibitions and performance, will allow students to consider self-representation as a means by which to disrupt and expand perceptions of Aboriginality.

Representation

Humans grapple with representations of themselves and their contexts. They also like to imagine other possible worlds. We use words, language, images, sounds and movement to construct narratives and stories, large and small, about the trivial and the profound, the past and the future. These representations can help us to understand worlds but they can also create worlds for us. This subject explores how different genres such as speech, writing, translation, film, theatre and art generate representations of social life, imagination and the human condition. A key aim of the subject is to develop a critical appreciation of how language, images and embodied gestures are used to construct empowering and disempowering discourses.

Compulsory

NameCredit points

Anthropology: Studying Self and Other12.5

Anthropology: Studying Self and Other

Anthropology explores the different ways people live their lives. In this subject, an introduction to foundational knowledge in the discipline, you will be exposed to a variety of social and cultural forms around the world and the methods and theories developed to understand them as diverse expressions of a shared human condition. Topical issues that will be encountered include how different peoples around the world experience and react to pleasure, suffering and death; use ritual, religion and magic to understand and change their worlds; organise their sexual and family lives and their friendship networks; create and maintain their identities; and maintain and resist the relations of power in which they are all enmeshed. Comparative ethnographic examples will illustrate a range of disciplinary concerns in anthropological research ethics and practice, the dynamic interaction between processes of order and change in social life, and its effects on how people experience the different worlds they inhabit.

Electives

NameCredit points

Power12.5

Power

The idea of power is a way to grasp the character of social relations. Investigating power can tell us about who is in control and who may benefit from such arrangements. Power can be a zero-sum game of domination. It can also be about people acting together to enact freedom. This subject examines the diverse and subtle ways power may be exercised. It considers how power operates in different domains such as markets, political systems and other social contexts. It also examines how power may be moderated by such things as regulation and human rights. A key aim is to explore how differing perspectives portray power relations and how issues of power distribution may be characterised and addressed.

The Developing World

This subject is an introduction to the developing world and development studies from the perspectives of Anthropology, Political Science, Economics, Sociology and Geography. Beginning with a critical examination of the legacies of colonialism, we will ask to what extent they can be argued to have created the current divide between the developed, global North and the developing or under-developed global South. We will then focus on the relationship between rich and poor countries in an increasingly globalised world, identifying the manifestations of global inequality and ways of addressing it. Students will also examine the roles of international organisations and global agendas such as the Sustainable Development Goals in mediating relations between global North and South. Key development issues such as poverty, aid, debt, trade, migration, climate change and sustainability will be investigated through the use of case studies from Africa, Latin America and Asia.

Compulsory

NameCredit points

Self, Culture and Society12.5

Self, Culture and Society

How is our sense of who we are shaped by society and culture? In what ways do such understandings of personhood vary cross-culturally? This subject addresses these concerns from an anthropological perspective, applying theories of personhood, identity and relatedness to broader topics such as nationalism, globalisation, migration, travel and tourism and the life course. We will investigate comparative and ethnographic case studies of the person and their relevance to a range of political, ethical, economic and cultural concerns about embryo rights, global meanings of childhood, nationalism as everyday practice and the role of biomedicine, new genetics and digital technologies in shaping understandings of personhood across the world today.

Core

NameCredit points

Keeping the Body in Mind12.5

Keeping the Body in Mind

This subject introduces a wide range of anthropological interests in the human body from a comparative ethnographic perspective. It explores topics such as body image and eating disorders, trans/gendered bodies, sporting/dancing bodies, body modifications, consciousness and the body/mind continuum, commodified bodies, disabled bodies and body healing. We will investigate how the human body is individually and culturally constructed and socially experienced through a critical examination of a range of ethnographic and theoretical literature, as well as through the student's own bodily experiences and their exploratory field research.

Anthropology of Gender and Sexuality

This subject offers a specifically anthropological perspective to understandings of gender and sexuality, providing an empirical, cross-cultural framework with which to evaluate and examine various theoretical perspectives. Topics covered include the influence of an anthropologist's gendered and sexual identity in shaping ethnography, the meaning of heterosexuality in a cross-cultural context, gender and Islam, gender and kinship, gendered experiences of migration, male and female sex tourism, and experiences of masculinity, femininity and third gender categories and identities in the world today. On completion of the subject students should have gained knowledge of gender-based systems of social classification in a global context and through this develop a critical awareness of the representation of women's and men's lives in ethnography.

Working with Value

This subject explores how people come to value things as they do, critically engaging with a range of theoretical and ethnographic literature to ask how value may be created, enhanced and realised in different ways. Students will be introduced to ways that anthropologists analyse and interpret variation in economic behaviour and economic systems. The first part of the subject examines the assumptions about human behaviour that inform classical, political and moral approaches to economics, and asks where these different approaches locate the source of value. Ethnographic examples from systems of different complexity will be used to explore topics such as: division of labour; 'gift' and 'commodity' economies; formal and informal economies; consumption, identity and 'consumer society'; the meaning of 'money' and its effects. Students should become familiar not only with how local economies work, but also with implications of the emerging global economy and the ways it is transforming local and regional economic logics.

Ethnic Nationalism and the Modern World

Ethnicity and nationalism are of special concern to anthropologists, especially in instances where anthropology becomes part of nationalist discourse. This subject considers ethnicity and nationalism through the in-depth analysis of a case study from the developing world, but draws on comparative material from Africa, the Americas, Asia, Australia, Europe and the Pacific. Students will examine different theoretical approaches to ethnicity, nationalism and ethnic nationalism, in particular the relationships between the formation of nation states and processes of 'development', 'transition' and 'underdevelopment'; the roles of actors, from political actors to ordinary people, in the construction of national projects; the relationships between historic and contemporary processes in the construction of national projects; how national projects are constructed, enforced and culturally maintained and the relationships between globalisation, migration, transnationalism and ethnic nationalism in the modern world.

Culture Change and Protest Movements

How have cultures throughout the world responded to changing economic, political, and environmental transformations? How have new world views emerged from highly charged cross-cultural encounters? And how have communities found innovative ways of resisting or modifying unwanted transformations in their 'ways of life'? In this subject, using theories of cultural change drawn from anthropology and cultural studies, we explore how communities, particularly in the global south, have coped with and creatively re-worked the demands of an often foreign-dominated market economy, with a particular focus on struggles around natural resource extraction and privitization. Paying special attention to what James C. Scott has called, the 'weapons of the weak', we explore the ways - both overt and subtle - that different societies have used symbolic practices, rituals and mythologies to accommodate, transform and mount resistance to the diverse agents and processes of global capitalism over the past 100 years. Case studies will be drawn from Africa, South America, North America, Eastern Europe and Asia.

Diplomat, Soldier, Spy: The Deep State

In contemporary societies, few of our activities are anonymous. From paying with credit cards to browsing the internet, an increasing amount of information is stored and processed in the interest of public safety. But who is monitoring these data, and why? Looking at ethnographic and historical analyses of new and old methods of surveillance, this subject explores the “Deep State” and its transformations over time. Throughout the semester, we will examine the networks of economic, political, and military interests that covertly enable different forms of state surveillance. Looking ethnographically at how the experiences of diplomats, spies, and soldiers changed over time, we will understand how states adapt to the digital era—and how common citizens navigate a world without privacy.

Fieldwork: Anthropology in Practice

Ethnographic research enables us to grasp the complexity and diversity of human experience. This subject provides an invaluable opportunity for students early in their studies of anthropology and related fields to undertake hands-on research in field sites close to home. In 2019, we will focus on understanding aspects of the student experience at the University of Melbourne. Teaching is seminar style, with short lectures and discussions of the practice of ethnographic research. Much of our meeting time will be focused on collaboratively developing research plans, sharing research results, and making sense of our findings. Working as individuals and in groups, students will 1) formulate a set of theoretically-informed research questions; 2) design plans for answering those questions through empirical research; 3) develop a protocol for engaging ethically with research subjects; 4) undertake a range of research activities, which may include participating in activities with research subjects, observing public events, mapping social or spatial relationships, and conducting open-ended or semi-structured interviews; 5) interpret the empirical data to produce an ethnographic analysis; and 6) reflect on the challenges and insights of ethnographic research. Through this process, students will deepen their understanding of the craft of research, gain confidence in their research and communication skills, and experience the excitement of ethnographic inquiry.

Electives

NameCredit points

Genders, Bodies & Sexualities12.5

Genders, Bodies & Sexualities

Bodies, genders and sexualities are at the heart of many contemporary social, cultural and political debates. Bodies in the plural are the focus of this subject - fat bodies and perfect bodies and trans bodies and leaky bodies, for example - and are analysed through a discussion of contemporary social research and an exploration of visual depictions (including advertising, film, music videos, photography). This subject examines the nature of debates around bodies, genders and sexualities, questioning the how, why and the politics underpinning them.

Sex and Gender Present and Future

How do sex and gender operate in the world today, and what are their possible futures? Indeed, do these concepts have a future? Can they adequately capture the breadth, range and fluidity of contemporary and global sexed and gendered lives? Key themes explored in this subject include: current theories and experiences of sex and gender in the world today; the increasing instability of the concepts of sex and gender and their transformations; gender fluidity; the persistence of gender inequality; gender as a cultural category versus gender as lived bodily experience; and the uses and abuses of the gender concept. The subject culminates by considering imagined futures of everyday gender practices and of sexualities. These themes will be explored in a global and cross-cultural context.

Critical Analytical Skills

This subject introduces students to the fundamental analytic skills that are used in social science research. It provides an introduction to the theoretical and epistemological foundations of social science research, familiarises students with the different methods of inquiry in the social sciences and provides an overview of key historical and contemporary debates and trends. Different theoretical approaches and their associated methods of inquiry will be introduced through practical examples in order to show their strengths and limitations.

Development in the 21st Century

This subject introduces students to the evolution of multiple paradigms of development, considers the strategies used to pursue development in practice, and identifies the key trends and issues of development in the 21 st century. We examine the theories promulgated about the developing world - of modernization and 'catch-up', of structuralism and dependency, of human development, alternative and post-development. Students will be encouraged to understand the diverse trajectories of development by close analysis of specific case studies across the world. We will explore the development path of countries in East and South-East Asia, the BRICs and other developing countries. We also review key issues of relevance to the developing world such as poverty and inequality, health, globalization, industrialization, religion and conflict.

Sex, Gender and Power

This subject offers an in depth look at questions of gender, sex and sexuality exploring recent histories of feminist, queer, affect and transgender theory. This course considers how notions of power have changed in relation to understanding gender and sexuality, from structural understandings of inequality, to postmodern theorisations that see power as diffuse. This course offers a contextual understanding of theoretical shifts that have taken place, such as from the first wave of feminism to the second, from sexuality studies to queer theory, and other recent shifts in thinking about bodies, materiality and affects. Key themes include: inequality, femininities, masculinities, difference, intersectionality, materiality, affect and lived experience.

Language, Society and Culture

This subject examines how social and cultural factors influence language, and the role language plays in structuring and representing social categories across cultures. It examines how society and language shape each other: how language represents and enables social interaction, and how social interaction influences the form of language. Specific topics to be covered include socially determined variation in language styles and registers, language varieties reflecting social class, gender and ethnic group. It also examines factors affecting language choice such as, bi- and multi-lingualism, and factors of language contact and change.

Contemporary Political Theory

This subject examines the development of political theory in the last thirty years. It focuses on the emergence of key theoretical paradigms such as contemporary liberalism, communitarianism, multiculturalism, radical pluralism, post-structuralism and post-modernism and the ways in which these schools of thought have framed key conceptual debates on ideology, power and sovereignty. The subject maps this terrain and analyses it through examples such as immigration, violence, the role of religion in public life, markets and economic rationality, the environment and welfare reform. Contemporary political theory emerges as vibrant and dynamic and the subject demonstrates how theory is integral to a developed understanding of current political events.

Social Theory and Political Analysis

This subject involves the study of theory and empirical research in social and political relations, culture and ideology, and human subjectivity and action. Students who complete this subject should possess an awareness of the ways in which social theory can provide a critical perspective on standard approaches to the study of politics, and knowledge of a repertoire of social theory concepts and approaches which can be drawn upon to analyse political processes.

Understanding Poverty

The literature on poverty identifies its causes as both economic and cultural. This subject aims to develop students understanding on the local and international economic factors producing poverty, as well as, its culture-bound causes and manifestations. Using poverty concepts in Development Studies, Political Economy, and Anthropology an analysis of multidimensional poverty and poverty reduction at micro and macro level will be provided. Students are expected to acquire comprehensive understanding of multidimensional poverty and are aware of various poverty reduction strategies

Capstone

NameCredit points

Theory & the Anthropological Imagination12.5

Theory & the Anthropological Imagination

This is the Capstone subject for students majoring in Anthropology. Focusing on contemporary issues (such as relatedness, identity, personhood, value, modernity and embodiment) that have been encountered through the course of the Anthropology major, the subject is designed to enable students to reflect on and demonstrate what they have learned about anthropology as a discipline. Its format thus differs from other subjects, being built around a series of seminars that explore actual research projects of staff in the anthropology program and how, in each case, theory and ethnography inform the research process. Students will also work together in small groups to critically analyse and contextualise a particular ethnography, developing research and teamwork skills in doing so. The aims of the subject thus are simultaneously theoretical and practical; it will provide students with experience in recognising how theory shapes the ways questions are both asked and answered, and with the ways that 'doing' anthropology in turn shapes theory.

Core

NameCredit points

Power, Ideology and Inequality12.5

Power, Ideology and Inequality

What sorts of inequalities are intensifying in the contemporary world? What dynamics are producing those intensifications? And how have anthropologists historically conceptualized the inequalities with which they gain firsthand experience through long-term fieldwork? Growing numbers of political and economic anthropologists are committed to exploring the ideological and material means by which systems of inequality are created, sustained, misrecognized, and challenged. Drawing principally on Marxist anthropology, post-structuralism and post-colonialism, this subject looks cross-culturally to explore the interrelationships between diverse forms and sources of power, the roles of colonialism and corporate globalization in configuring and sustaining local relations of inequality, and the rise of resistance movements that explicitly challenge exclusions based on class, gender, and ethnicity. Special attention will be paid to the effects of multinational corporations on local power relations and patterns of inequality throughout the world via brand marketing, legal reform, and corporate social responsibility. Case studies will be drawn from Latin America, North America, Africa, Australia, and Southeast Asia.

Anthropology of More-Than-Human Worlds

This subject draws on ethnographic examples to explore the diverse ways that humans come to know and think about the natural world, understand their place in relation to that world, and interpret their roles and responsibilities in relation to other beings in the world. Engaging with a range of ethnographic and theoretical literature, it questions what people might mean when they talk of Nature, including human nature. Through considering topics such as Traditional Ecological Knowledge, patterns of land tenure and management, the power of anthropomorphism and the naturalising of social differences and inequalities, students will develop an understanding of recent approaches to a key issue in anthropology – the relationship between Nature and Culture. How we imagine that relationship is deeply implicated in some of the questions we are all now having to confront. Do we work with Nature, or against it? Did we invent ‘Nature’ (another of those pesky dualities)? And have we now brought about ‘the end of nature’? Are we now living in the Anthropocene, or in a post-human/more-than-human world?

Cultures of Law

Cultures of Law begin with a focus on the early themes and concepts that laid down the anthropological foundations and understandings of law and social order. Through an ethnographic approach, it will examine; (a) how social practices in different cultures shape one’s understandings of laws and customs; (b) the different legal sensibilities across societies; (c) the constitution of customary laws and colonialism in different societies; (d) colonialism and the emergence of new definitions of law and order. Focusing particularly on former colonies in non-western societies, students will explore themes of customary law, kinship networks, processes of arbitration in customary courts (in Asia and Africa), and the connection between colonialism and legal systems in the global south. The core readings will consist of anthropological texts about processes of arbitration, judgment, law and customs, and judicial processes to focus on interpretation of rights, justice, and definitions of law and order in the contemporary world.

Cultural Tourism in Southeast Asia

This subject focuses on tourism in Southeast Asia, home to some of the most prominent tourist destinations in the world. Drawing on anthropology theory and ethnographic case studies, the subject assesses the social, cultural and economic impact of tourism in the region, with a particular focus on the island of Bali, Indonesia. The subject addresses key anthropological concerns about identity, culture, community and social change, amidst appreciation of issues that have evolved in the anthropology of tourism about research methods, government policy, relations between hosts and guests, environmental issues, material culture, heritage tourism and the growth of residential tourism in the region. The subject is co-taught with scholars from Udayana University, Bali, Indonesia, who will provide cross-disciplinary perspectives on tourism in Southeast Asia. As a University of Melbourne Overseas subject (UMOS) this subject will take place on site at Udayana University in Bali. Whilst based in Bali, the subject will involve field trips to relevant tourism sites on the island.

Anthropology of Kinship and Family

Kinship studies has a long, important and contentious history in Anthropology. Drawing on this historical legacy this subject applies both classic and contemporary anthropological theories of family, kinship and social relatedness to a range of ethnographic case studies. The subject addresses three inter-related themes. Firstly, there is an anthropological focus on the links that exist between kinship and the nation-state in terms of national identity, ethnicity, migration and state policy. Secondly, the subject considers yet complicates imaginings of blood ties and biogenetic substance by examining the influences of black magic, ghost marriages, Skype, spiritual conception, milk, guns, deities, surrogate mothers and medical practitioners in the shaping of kin ties today. Finally, there is a focus on continuity and social change and the ways in which the meaning of family, kinship and social relationships are transformed or otherwise by new reproductive and genetic technologies, polygamy, same-sex relationships, friendships and the influence of internet and mobile-phone based forms of communication.

Society, Politics, and the Sacred

What is religion? What purpose does it serve? How does it vary across cultures? Why is it growing rapidly in many parts of the world despite predictions of its inevitable decline? And how does it relate to politics in a diversity of social systems? In this subject, we explore the symbolic systems and ritual practices that people throughout the world have used to make sense of their place in the social world, the political order, the environment, and the cosmos. Students learn core anthropological approaches to the study of religion by exploring topics that may include images of mythic order and social transgression; the divergent functions of trance and shamanic practice; the roles of messianic religion in movements for social change; the meanings and functions of contemporary pilgrimage; the relationships between occult movements and the rise of shadow economies; and the uses of religious conceptions in contemporary debates about large-scale mining and climate change. Special attention will be paid throughout to the relationship between religion and politics.

Design & Desire in the Startup World

What makes new startups successful? How do they create products that capture our imagination and desires? This subject explores the social, cultural, and political forces that make innovation possible in the startup world, leading students to understand critically what startups are, and how they relate to the forms of inequality and privilege that permeate our contemporary economy. Throughout the semester, we will partner with startups. We will conduct hands-on research that will explore how individuals react to innovative technologies, including robots or social media apps. Students who take this subject will be asked to incorporate their critical analyses about the startup ecosystem with creative thinking that helps startups move from ideas to products. This subject will allow students to participate in the design process and build their creativity and research skills in the job market.

Anthropology of Urban Life and Conflict

Based on the detailed reading of five ethnographic monographs, this subject considers the peculiar problems of studying the intimacy of social life in urban contexts and amid serious conflict and dislocation. Examples are taken from a range of contexts such as southern Europe, southeast Asia, Japan, and Latin America, and students are invited to discuss Australian and other examples familiar to them. The course considers issues such as the impact of urban life on rural migrants; the effects of gentrification and other forms of class discrimination; the sacred forms underlying secular urban spaces; the problems of cultural interaction and historic conservation in densely populated spaces; and the relation between capital cities and their respective nation-states. Written work is focused on careful reading of the ethnographic examples and on students’ skills in comparing cases and understanding the significance of the urban as a distinctive kind of context.

The Corporation and the Gig-Economy

In the age of automation, working means either getting endless, short terms, and precarious “gigs,” or becoming part of massive international corporations. This subject explores the relations and tensions between these two worlds, focusing on recent ethnographic work on the gig-economy and large companies (Coca-Cola, Ford, Philip Morris, Dow Chemical, Chevron-Texaco). Considering the cultural dynamics internal to multinational corporations as well as the social processes that generated a precarious economic landscape after the 1970s, the subject describes how these new spaces of work interact with, influence, and are shaped by community life, often in situations of significant power imbalance. With the help of guest speakers from the corporate sector and activists, we pay particular attention to the methodological and ethical challenges of carrying out research on, for, and within corporations or in the gig-economy. Case studies are drawn from India, PNG, Ecuador, Indonesia, the United States, Brazil, Eastern Europe, Italy, Japan, and South Africa.

Electives

NameCredit points

Australian Indigenous Public Policy12.5

Australian Indigenous Public Policy

The subject examines the governance arrangements that have shaped the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples since settlement. Prior to, at the time of, and since Federation, Indigenous Australians have been uniquely affected by a range of public policy settings, approaches and frameworks. Part One of the subject introduces students to foundational concepts in public policy making and then critically examines different ‘epochs’ in Australian Indigenous Public Policy: elimination, assimilation, self-determination and intervention. Part Two will explore various policies across these periods that have shaped Indigenous Australians’ experiences of land, family, health, education, employment and justice in different ways. Across both parts, students will have the opportunity to deepen their knowledge about historical and contemporary political controversies, including: the Don Dale controversy, the refusal of The Uluru Statement from the Heart, the Closing the Gap framework and others. Students will be expected to use knowledge of particular cases to examine the social, political and institutional challenges that shape the landscape of contemporary Australian Indigenous Public Policy.

Contemporary Sociological Theory

The subject examines major approaches and debates within contemporary sociological theory, and the different research directions that emerge from these approaches. Beginning with an overview of the classical foundations of sociological theory, the subject explores contemporary sociological theories which engage with questions of power, social order, and conflict. The subject also examines contemporary sociological approaches to critical issues including globalization, individualization, and identity. As the subject proceeds, we will examine how researchers construct, evaluate and modify theory to respond to transformations in social relations and practices. In this way, it will become evident that sociological theory is in a constant process of interaction with everyday social structures, relations and experiences. Students will complete the subject with knowledge of key approaches and debates in contemporary sociological theory, and with the capacity to use sociological theory to construct social research questions.

Critical Theories

The aim of this subject is to introduce students to and critically examine the major debates in contemporary critical theories from Western Marxism to postmodernism. These critical theories include the German Frankfurt School, French poststructuralism, the Budapest School, post-Marxism and feminism, all of which are set against the background of the Enlightenment and the Romantic and Heidegerrean responses to it. On completion of the subject, students should have developed an understanding of the central issues and ideas of the critical theorists covered in this course and be able to convey this understanding through a critical engagement with the issues and theories in the written assessment of the course.

Psychoanalysis and Social Theory

Psychoanalysis has informed and influenced contemporary social theory in manifold ways. Psychoanalysis has been central to theorising the decentred subject, it has radically affected conceptualisations of ideology, thrown reason under radical suspicion and has contributed to a better understanding of identities. including identities of nation, race, gender and ethnicity. This subject investigates these issues in the context of a consideration of texts by Freud, Klein, Lacan, Kristeva, Adorno, Fromm, Habermas, Zizek, Mitchell, Giddens and Althusser. Students who complete this subject should gain a sound knowledge of some major traditions in psychoanalytic theory, particularly Freudian, Kleinian and Lacanian, and should come to possess an awareness of why social theory has been drawn to psychoanalysis in order to analyse subjectivities, group processes, intergroup relations, ideological formations, and forms of reason.